The Children of Jocasta
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3.8 • 6 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
When you have grown up as I have, there is no security in not knowing things, in avoiding the ugliest truths because they can't be faced . . . Because that is what happened the last time, and that is why my siblings and I have grown up in a cursed house, children of cursed parents . . .
Jocasta is just fifteen when she is told that she must marry the King of Thebes, an old man she has never met. Her life has never been her own, and nor will it be, unless she outlives her strange, absent husband.
Ismene is the same age when she is attacked in the palace she calls home. Since the day of her parents' tragic deaths a decade earlier, she has always longed to feel safe with the family she still has. But with a single act of violence, all that is about to change.
With the turn of these two events, a tragedy is set in motion. But not as you know it.
In Children of Jocasta, Natalie Haynes reimagines the Oedipus and Antigone stories from the perspectives of two of the women who have often been overlooked; retelling the myth to reveal a new side of an ancient story.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The legends of Oedipus and his daughter Antigone are told through two interwoven story lines in Haynes's dark, elegant novel (following The Furies). An urgent, first-person narrative introduces Ismene just as she learns of the murder of her sister, Antigone. Then, a statelier third-person voice introduces Jocasta, as she is giving birth. The narrative flashes back to Jocasta's reluctant marriage to unappealing King Laius, who's in desperate need of an heir. Jocasta's newborn (who will grow to be Oedipus) is whisked away from Jocasta, who's told that the baby did not survive. Grief over the loss of her child lingers, and Jocasta becomes closer to her brother, Creon, distancing herself from the royal family. Decades later, Laius is killed by Oedipus, who woos Jocasta, despite her age. Ismene's narrative also flashes back, to her idyllic childhood with siblings Antigone, Eteocles, and Polynices. The first half of the novel is dominated by Jocasta and, after Oedipus's ascent to the throne, switches primarily to Ismene and her grief when Antigone sacrifices herself to bring an honorable burial to her brothers, war casualties fighting on different sides. The hopefulness of her voice plays evocatively against Jocasta's more ominous and somber narrative. Haynes's greatest achievement is imagining a full world surrounding Sophocles's tragedies, thrusting two minor characters in their respective plays to the forefront and bringing the myths vividly to life.
